Return to Community: Building Support Systems for People with Psychiatric Disabilities

Provides a comprehensive, practical approach to fully integrating people with serious mental illnesses into the community. Drawing from a range of resources, including mental health consumers and their families, this pathbreaking work lays the groundwork for a critical rethinking of how we view people labeled "mentally ill".

Defining "community integration," the author examines current and past approaches to meeting the needs of people with psychiatric disabilities, demonstrating how they have been inadequate. Carling then maps out a pioneering paradigm for community integration, which consists of an active partnership among mental health professionals, community leaders, policy makers, families, neighbors, employers, and realtors. Describing ways to prepare the community to organize for change, the book discusses the need to first address the pervasive nature of stigma, which is reflected at every level of society.

Drawing from his own extensive experience, as well as from firsthand observations of model programs in place throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, the author offers detailed guidance for organizing a program of action in mental health systems and in local communities.